Mary awoke from her nightmare with a pounding heart, convinced that she had only imagined Elizabeth's cruel plot. A full moon was shining into her chamber, illuminating everything around her in silvery light. That was when she noticed for the first time that there were bars on her window.

Margaret George

Categorized in : Heart Moon Light

The strong look for more strength, the weak for excuses.

Margaret George

excuse strong looks

I had a desire to see something besides my own shores, if only to be content to return to them someday. If I wish to live in my native land and love her, it should not be out of ignorance.

Margaret George

land ignorance travel

One always imagines that the days that change one’s life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential.

Margaret George

storm darkness life

Kindness is stronger than iron bars.

Margaret George

iron stronger kindness

Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.

Margaret George

speak use mouths

The cure for a broken heart is simple, my lady. A hot bath and a good night's sleep.

Margaret George

broken-heart good-night sleep

Oh, he was just angry, we tell ourselves when someone blurts out something he later apologizes for. But a word, once spoken, lingers forever; to keep peace we pretend to forget, but we never do. Strange that a spoken word can have such lasting power when words carved on stone monuments vanish in spite of all our efforts to preserve them. What we would lose persists, lodged in our minds, and what we would keep is lost to water, moths, moss.

Margaret George

effort forever water

Defeat I can endure with cheerfulness, my lady. But betrayal is like taking the wind from my sails, or the earth from beneath my feet. It chills my spirits like a rainy day, and all I can do is draw the curtains and cry into my pillow.

Margaret George

rainy-day betrayal wind

Yet we always envy others, comparing our shadows to their sunlit sides.

Margaret George

envy shadow sides

We are always tortured by our memory of the last time we were with anyone, what we said, what we did not say.

Margaret George

lasts hate memories

Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine - that is, activity - which could solve it, is seen as odious.

Margaret George

archery boredom medicine

Hope is a straw hat hanging beside a window covered with frost.

Margaret George

hats frost window

When he comes into a room, you give a little gasp, deep inside, far inside,' someone once said when trying to describe what it meant to love.

Margaret George

littles trying giving

I was ever the realist, sometimes to my sorrow. But seldom to my regret.

Margaret George

regret sorrow sometimes

Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine ― that is, activity ― which could solve it, is seen as odious. Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw. Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on. Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most unmanning. Eventually, it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing ― a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.

Margaret George

archery cousin brother

What is one person's diversion may be another's supreme test.

Margaret George

diversion tests may

The most wicked criminals have God on their lips at all times, for God is the only one who can stomach them.

Margaret George

lips wicked criminals

Things do not happen, we must make them happen

Margaret George

happens

So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

Margaret George

loss relationship night

Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.

Margaret George

journey self sweet